Ready To Paint In 30 Minutes: Flowers In Watercolour

Learn to paint watercolour flowers in 35 easy-to-follow 30-minute exercises.

This complete beginner’s guide to painting flowers in watercolour is ideal if you want to learn to paint but are short on time. Each of the 35 quick and easy exercises takes no more than 30 minutes to complete, and will teach you how to paint flowers of different shapes, colours and families – lilies, orchids and hellebores amongst others – or learn a key technique such as masking out, working wet in wet and colour-mixing. The exercises are all worked at postcard size – ideal for a 6 x 4in (A6) watercolour pad, and tracings are included for each study. The book is broken down into five chapters that focus, respectively, on working with watercolour, watercolour techniques, colour and tone, form and detail, and finally flowers in context. The final section of the book contains three complete paintings that demonstrate how to combine all the techniques and elements of painting flowers, as learned from the preceding chapters. These paintings, too, are accompanied by actual-size tracings.

Introduction 6
Basic painting equipment 8
Working with watercolour 10
Washes 12
Working wet in wet 14
Layering 16
Blending out 18
Using the white of the paper 20
Techniques 22
Masking 24
Cutting out 26
Negative painting 28
White flowers with shadows 30
Spattering & scribbling 32
Salt & wax resists 34
Colour & tone 36
Mixing greens 38
Mixing dark colours 40
Mixing shadow colours 42
Mixing yellows 44
Mixing autumn colours 46
Contrast & tone 48
Backlighting 50
Form & detail 52
Drawing & composing 54
Flower shapes: star 56
Flower shapes: bell 58
Flower shapes: cup 60
Flower shapes: cone 62
Complex flower shapes 64
Buds 66
Painting leaves 68
Leaf shapes 70
Seed heads 72
Seed heads: ‘Honesty’ 74
Flower markings: orchid 76
Flower markings: hellebore 78
Flowers in context 80
Flowers in a vase 82
Mixed border 84
Woodland with daffodils 86
Flowers in pots 88
Dog roses in a landscape 90
Pansies in a vase 92
Clematis on a trellis 94
Index 96
Templates 97

Having just had a handful of ‘beginners’ watercolour lessons and finding them very challenging I was introduced to this book. Wow! I found it to be very exciting and inspiring. For people new to painting and to watercolour this is the book for you. You don’t even need to be able to draw!

The book is full of ideas, tips and projects for you to work through. Each chapter leads on to new and interesting techniques to learn such as ‘spattering’, ‘wax resist’ and the use of salt. For those who find drawing difficult as I do tracings are provided of the flowers, leaves and seed heads featured so there is no excuse not to get started! Each ‘tracing’ is carefully cross referenced to the relevant project and page where you will find step-by-step instructions to lead you through the painting techniques needed to complete your chosen project.

At the beginning of the book there is information about the basic equipment needed. A list of the paint colours used throughout is given but as well as their names there is also a colour chart. I found this a great help as it meant I could mix the colour I needed if I didn’t have the particular paint mentioned.

As it is now autumn I decided to have a go at the leaf (see Pic 1). This involved painting ‘wet-in- wet’. I particularly enjoyed trying out the effect of ‘spatter spots’. Painting the ‘Anemone with shadows’ picture (pic 2) introduced the idea of using ‘negative space’ to keep areas white, and of us